Data reveal members of a global pact promising vaccine equity are among those undermining the initiative; frenzy of deals covers some 8.8 billion doses
Durham, NC, USA (November 2, 2020)—A new global assessment of purchasing agreements for COVID-19 vaccines reveals that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries flush with manufacturing capacity, have already purchased nearly 3.8 billion doses, with options for another five billion. The analysis, released today by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, shows that many of these countries will be able to vaccinate their entire populations—and some many times over—before billions of people are vaccinated in low-income countries.
“An ambitious effort to create a global system of vaccine equity is being undermined as a handful of countries—including those who made a commitment to equality—secure as many doses as they possibly can,” said Elina Urli Hodges, MSPH, who leads the Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer, an initiative that identifies impediments to delivering health innovations to low-income countries. “Countries are hedging bets by making direct deals while also participating in multilateral platforms, which drives inequality and threatens to prolong a global pandemic.”
While other assessments have warned of potential inequalities in vaccine access, this new analysis is the first to carefully quantify the amount of vaccine doses that are being claimed by country-level agreements and how this could delay access to COVID-19 protection across large regions—including sub-Saharan Africa—until almost the middle of the decade.
Read the full press release here. (PDF file)